Plea deal offered in funeral fraud case

Saturday

Jun 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMJun 29, 2013 at 1:00 AM

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Seven defendants accused in a prearranged funeral scam that prosecutors said bilked customers out of as much as $600 million have been offered plea deals that would allow them to avoid potential life sentences.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch outlined the plea offers yesterday. The deal would require five to 10 years in prison in exchange for guilty pleas. The case is being handled in federal court in St. Louis.

Prosecutors said the now-defunct National Prearranged Services Inc. operated like a Ponzi scheme, affecting as many as 150,000 customers who paid as much as $10,000 for the service.

Investigators allege that NPS and its officers and directors, who were all related, played to consumers' fears by promising to prevent their heirs from being burdened by high funeral costs. But instead of investing the money from pre-arranged funeral policies, they allegedly diverted the money to their own use, used it in ways that weren't disclosed or used it to pay for funerals that were funded through prior contracts.

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